Frontier Carbon Removal Technologies

We’re excited to announce our new and expanded request for startups and nonprofits focusing on frontier technologies to remove carbon from the atmosphere. Read the RFS here.

Climate change is one of the biggest problems we face as humans and we want YC to be part of driving these solutions. Research indicates that stopping climate change requires both emission reduction and removing CO2 from the atmosphere.

While we’ve funded a lot of great companies working on renewal energy like Bright, Buypower, Advano, and Helion and will continue to do so, we’ve identified four frontier technologies to remove CO2 that we think deserve more research and attention. We worked with scientists on preliminary research into each category. These ideas press on the limit of what’s possible, and we’re not sure which side of that line they’re on. We know there are a lot of ideas out there, and want to take an expansive approach.

We have conviction that it’s a worthwhile endeavor to remove CO2 from the air and transform it into something else useful or figure out how to store it safely, long-term. They may seem like moonshots now, but our goal is to try to come up with technically feasible solutions at realistic costs. It’s time to take big swings at stopping climate change and put more resources into work already being done.